Kevin Casey

Life
1940-2022; b. Kells, Co. Meath; ed. Christian Brothers; worked in advertising; wrote The Living and the Lost (Abbey Th., March 1962), and on that account became the Abbey’s youngest playwright; wrote Not With a Bang (Th. Fest., Eblana Sept. 1965), set in Dublin, London, Washington and Moscow, with Des Keogh and others acting; issued The Sinner’s Bell (1968), a bleakly pessimistic novel in the tradition of the Brinsley Macnamara’s Valley of the Squinting Windows recounting the doomed marriage between a young woman and the local publican’s spoilt son; also A Sense of Survival (1979, rep. 1985), and Dreams of Revenge (1977), on the Northern Irish Troubles; issued A State of Mind (2009), loosely based on Frederick Forsyth’s experiences as a tax exile in Ireland in the 1970s, under threat from the iRA; taught at Iowa University; m. to Eavan Boland [q.v.]; reviews theatre for RTE Arts Show; issued A State of Mind (2009); his death in March 2022 shortly followed that of his wife in 2020; survived by children, Sarah and Eavan Frances. DIL FDA

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Commentary
Sue Leonard, ‘Narrator’s Block’, review of A State of Mind, in Books Ireland (Sept. 2009): ‘It’s the 1970s in county Wicklow [...] John Hughes is suffering from writer’s block [...] His wife, Laura earns enough as a radiographer to keep the family in comfort and the couple’s daughter Rachel at boarding school, and that leaves John free to drift, while he looks fruitlessly for inspiration. / One can only assume that the author of A State of Mind knows a thing or two about that particular complaint. Kevin Casey, a writer and critic who is married to the poet Eavan Boland, published three novels back in the sixties and seventies, but this is the first offering to have come to light since. Certainly that lack of purpose; that meandering from pub to bar as John struggles to fill his days is convincing. It’s no wonder, really, that when he forms an attraction, bordering on obsession for the cool beauty Ingrid, it blossoms into a fraught, if fulfilling affair. / Perhaps, John thinks, a bit of passion might unlock that pen. So he writes a journal, detailing that first meeting in a pub, that snatched kiss in the kitchen during a dinner party, and those long afternoons of guilty bliss. John knows, of course, that he is betraying Laura. He worries about the effect of an affair on Rachel who one afternoon almost catches him in flagrante. But he’s too busy dissecting his feelings, wondering how it can be possible to love two women at once, to end the affair. And besides, it’s good copy. [...]’ Remarks that Casey ‘evokes a time when drinking at lunchtime was the norm’ and considers it ‘his sense of time and place that makes the novel such a good read’, calling ‘the whole a tantalising account that rings true.’

See also Rosita Sweetman, ‘Casey’s debut is an unflinching portrayal of small-town Ireland’, review of The Sinners’ Bell [rep.], in The Irish Times (4 Nov 2017) -available online; also notice on The Sinner’s Bell at Kim Forrester’s Reading Matters blog (12 March 2018) - available online; [both accessed 31.12.2024].

Note: Dreams of Revenge was reviewed by Maurice Harmon in Irish University Review, 7: 2 [The National Library of Ireland Cent. Iss.] (Autumn 1977), pp.296-301- along with novels by David Martin (The Ceremony of Innocence); Paul Smith (Come Trailing Blood); Jennifer Johnston (Shadows on Our Skin), Benedict Kiely (Proxopera), and Francis Stuart (A Hole in the Head).

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References
Booksellers
Whelan Books (Cat. 32) lists Dreams of Revenge (Faber 1977), Cathach Bks. (Cat. 12) lists A Sense of Survival (1974) [?err.]; The Sinner’s Bell [1st edn.] (London 1969); Winter Tales from Ireland (Dublin 1970).

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Notes
The Living and the Lost (1962): Mairteen Deignan, a domineering, old-fashioned Mayo farmer has a hard enough time used to the fact that his daughter is a television star. Joyce Murdoch, a seductive Englishwoman, arrives to stay with the family while gathering folklore from the locale, adding interest to his life. (See Irish Playography, online; accessed 08.08.2009.)

The Sinner’s Bell is noticed in Cahalan, The Irish Novel (1988), p.273; see also long entry (Robert Hogan, Dict. of Irish Literature, 1979). None of these sources refer to a university education.

A State of Mind (2009): The protagonist is a novelist living in Co. Wicklow in the 1970s at a time when the Northern Troubles are looming large. He allows himself to be drawn into friendship with a once-famous English writer and his German girlfriend, who have moved into a neighbouring house and gets caught up in marital betrayal, suicide, blackmail, and some traditional Anglo-lrish animosity. The hero shakes off his torpor at a heavy cost to his mental well-being and undergoes some trials before finding redemption in writing. (See Books Ireland, Summer 2009, p.155.)

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